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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

>[1] "The bible says so" is simply not a good enough answer - ever.

Axioms are fine in logic, mathematics, physics, ... so why not elsewhere?

It's certainly an unsatisfying answer.

If however you assume for a moment that it portrays the will of the Creator then The Bible saying so is no worse (or better) than the fine-structure constant not having a logical derivation as to it's value.

People trying to give a reason for a Biblical injunction have, I suspect, often not discovered the reason the Creator made things one way or another but are really just speculating. Like one might speculate why a universe might have a fixed light speed in vacuo.

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The fine structure constant is not axiomatic; its value and its contantness are experimentally testable.

Axioms are not "fine" in math or science except under very specific circumstances.

>The fine structure constant is not axiomatic; its value and its contantness are experimentally testable.

Yeah, I plucked a little too randomly perhaps - the point there is not that it is axiomatic (which I didn't claim) but that it is an arbitrary value; indeed it is a complex of arbitrary values that apparently define the physics of our universe somewhat.

Why is it that value, well, er, just because (or some version of the anthropic principle if you swing that way).

"...arbitrary values that apparently define the physics of our universe somewhat."

In other words, this constant is a piece of a model, fitted to observable behaviour, subject to refinement based on empirical data. And the model may at some point be able to offer insight as to why things are as they are; "just because" is not viewed by most physicists as a permanent explanation.

This is the exact opposite of religious thinking which offers conclusions in advance of, and regardless of, any empirical data.

My point is that the parallel you're trying to draw between religious prescription and the things that scientists call "axioms" is not valid.

>"just because" is not viewed by most physicists as a permanent explanation

Why do you suppose this is any different for a Christian physicist, say, than for any other physicist? That aside I imagine that many physicists hold to a form of Anthropic Principle which almost fits the definition of "just because".

As an agnostic I always felt that God was the cop-out answer that replaced "we don't know". As a Christian not knowing everything still frustrates me but knowing now that within our current knowledge it is provable that not everything is knowable softens the blow of that somewhat (Godel, Church-Turing, etc.).

>religious thinking which offers conclusions in advance of, and regardless of, any empirical data

You suppose that religion is false to state your position, of course you do, but if you suspend your supposition then you see that religion 'offers truth in advance of reason'.

Christians generally, IME, don't say that God exists as the conclusion of a logical argument it's presuppositional in the same way as assumption of the validity of ones own sense data, or the assumption of ones actual self or of an external world.

Christians take that 'Christ died for our sins and was resurrected to heaven' and live by it and find that it works. Physicists take that 'c is constant for all observers' and live by it and find that it works. Obviously 'it works' means many different things both to the Christian and to the scientist (coherentism, instrumentalism, etc.).

"...if you suspend your supposition then you see that religion 'offers truth in advance of reason'"

This statement is a tautology, and also completely beside the point. It matters not whether a belief held religiously is actually true. By definition, a belief held religiously is held without regard to reason or evidence. The extent to which reason and evidence intrude is the extent to which faith is obviated.

This entire process, this way of thinking, is and should be entirely alien to science. And the anthropic principle is not science. It's not even a principle -- it's conjecture. It's not testable, not falsifiable, and it has no material effect on any scientific research, influential though it may in philosophical terms.

Your last statement is ..., it's ... no. Just, no. There is nothing alike about those two things. The constant c is, again, eminently isolatable in experiment, quite testable, and part of part of a quite falsifiable theory. The statement that following Christ has worked well for your life, even if true in whatever sense you like, is everything science is not: anecdotal, unfalsifiable, and untestable if only for the presence of millions of variables that cannot be isolated, controlled, or even known. You're conflating two completely separate things.

btw, I'm a big fan of this anthropic jazz. It is aesthetically pleasing to me, like the thought of any finely crafted machine, but it is in no way shape or form scientific.

It's worth pointing out that a religious belief is not the same as a belief held religiously.

A reasonable Christian would believe that God created the world in 6 days, but also believe that species have evolved to what we have now.

A dedicated atheist would believe religiously that there are no gods, even if she were standing in front of Thor.

There are multiple axiom systems in all of those fields and axioms are readily dropped if another set proves more useful.

Yes. Do you have a conclusion to that thought or more to add? I'd like to read it.

Alternative logical axioms are something I find interesting but I've only really studied a couple of alternative axiomatic systems of arithmetic (Peano - limited as it is by Godel's incompleteness theorem, Robinson, ZFC, can't think of any others of the top of my head).

Axioms are fine in logic, mathematics, physics, ... so why not elsewhere?

The axioms that I believe in are provable. Things like 1+1=2. There is no proof that <insert your god here> created the world in <insert your days here>.

So tell me an axiom, preferably religiously based, that I can go out and prove.

Religion by its very definition is faith based. As soon as you start proving/disproving it, religion simply doesn't exist anymore.

Axioms by definition are not provable.

Axioms are fine in logic, mathematics, physics, ... so why not elsewhere?

Because those axioms work, and are verifiable independently, and the Bible's axioms don't, except through sheer coincidence.

Hint: If you have to die to find out if you've been lied to all your life, you should consider that a pretty big problem with your faith.

>Because those axioms work, and are verifiable independently

Can you expand on what you mean by this. Are you saying, for example, that you've proven GR without axioms - you've verified independently that a specific constant c is a necessary condition based on other axioms (or somesuch)? I take it you're a foundationalist?

An attempt at an example: The Bible says excessive greed is wrong. One can argue that it is a simple consequence of other more elementary moral statements within. Lets assume here that it's an axiomatic moral statement anyhow (I don't think it matters for these purposes). It works; it's independently verifiable that excessive greed is destructive. In Biblical terms such destructiveness is wrong (another axiom) whilst clearly wrong is not a scientifically determinable position.

I don't understand your "hint" it sounds like an attempt at snarky humour from a position of petitio principii but I really can't unravel the intention inside the gag.

I don't know what a foundationalist is. I think the difference comes down to what you demand from your knowledge of reality. Every time I use the GPS on my phone to see where I am, I am relying on the axioms underpinning GR to hold true within the precision required to correct the atomic clocks on the satellites for time dilation.

The principles of GR may not model reality completely -- and it would be really unusual and surprising if they did -- but they're good enough for me because they're testable.

I don't understand your "hint" it sounds like an attempt at snarky humour from a position of petitio principii but I really can't unravel the intention inside the gag.

Here, I'm poking fun at you because (assuming you're not just adopting a religious POV as a rhetorical exercise) you have to die to find out if you're right, while all I have to do is open my eyes and compare my location to what my GPS tells me. To the extent these locations differ, I can ask questions and eventually understand why.

I see no need to consider the supernatural until I have perfected my understanding of the natural... which ain't gonna happen anytime soon. If that makes me a 'foundationalist,' then so be it.

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